


Sepia

by winteratdusk



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Crying, Electrocution, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Non-Consensual Drug Use, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve feels guilty, Torture, Violence, Vomiting, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:14:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26951986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winteratdusk/pseuds/winteratdusk
Summary: When Steve discovers a box of old films hidden in an abandoned HYDRA base, he gets an unexpected closer look at what it took to turn Bucky into the Winter Soldier.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 6
Kudos: 67
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Sepia

**Author's Note:**

> written for whumptober prompts "crying," "defiance"  
> warnings for graphic violence/torture, mentions of non-consensual drug use (sedation), non-graphic vomiting
> 
> This is, by nature, pretty dark - please be sure to check the above warnings and tags before reading!

At first it just looked like another dead end. The HYDRA base buried deep in the Alps looked like it hadn’t seen action in years, sitting mostly empty with the exception of a few miscellaneous pieces of dusty lab equipment that couldn’t have originated long after Steve went into the ice. He and Sam had split up to case the building anyway, ostensibly on the off chance that they might find a scrap of helpful intel somewhere, though Steve knew that his own reasons for insisting they thoroughly searched every base they came across weren’t so tactically motivated. Really, he just felt like he was obligated to see them. Learning the details of every place Bucky had been held - of every horrible thing that had happened to him after Steve had already given up on him - didn’t feel like nearly enough of a penance for what Steve had let happen, but, he thought with grim satisfaction, it at least felt like a start. 

That overwhelming sense of obligation and guilt followed him as he pushed on alone through the apparently empty base, having sent Sam to check the upper levels while he searched the winding maze of rooms below the ground floor. He was moving stealthily through a long, dark hallway, glancing furtively through open doors and cracked windows into what looked like a series of empty offices, when he found it - a locked door, nondescript at first glance but bearing a padlock so heavy that Steve couldn’t help but zero in on it. Primitive as the lock may have been, none of the other rooms in this base seemed to have been thought of as worth securing at all. There was something behind this door - Steve was sure of it. Curiosity warring with mounting dread, Steve raised his shield - slowly, like he didn’t really want to but had no choice - and brought it down on the lock. 

It took a couple of tries, but the heavy chain fell away easily enough. Steve took a deep breath, his mind cycling through all the miscellaneous horrors he’d seen behind locked doors at the other bases they’d raided, and slowly pushed open the door.

Steve’s pounding heart slowed a little when his eyes adjusted to the darkness inside the room. It was small, hardly bigger than a supply closet, and blessedly devoid of any lethal weapons or torture equipment. The only distinctive item in the room was a dusty projector, almost an exact copy of the ones they’d used to play his old Captain America reels during the war. On the ground beneath it was an old box that looked like it was meant for storing files, the brown cardboard stained and flaky with age. Steve was prepared to take it and start rifling through it for possible clues, but a glance inside the box showed that it contained, not files, but a stack of film reels, unlabelled and dusty with disuse. The box seemed innocuous enough, but something about this whole situation was making the hairs stand up on the back of Steve’s neck. What was it about these films that had warranted them being buried so many stories underground and sealed away?

Steve turned his attention to the projector. A reel was already loaded in and waiting, and Steve was struck with the sudden and ridiculous mental image of some HYDRA scientist setting it up for a movie night before up and abandoning the base entirely. He glanced over his shoulder, sparing a thought for Sam, hopefully still safe in the upper levels of the base. Glanced back at the projector with its tantalizingly mysterious roll of film, considering his options. It could be important intel, he reasoned. Best to go ahead and get a sense of what they were working with here. Right? After a brief moment of consideration, Steve slowly raised his hand, fingers only trembling a little, and prodded the projector’s power switch.

The projector sputtered to life, flashing a grainy square of light on the opposite wall. Steve watched with bated breath as the reel clicked into place, listening to the soft whirr of the machine as the light blinked out and was replaced with… 

Oh. 

Steve was suddenly staring right at Bucky Barnes, looking just the way Steve remembered him in 1945. 

Well, not quite the way he remembered him, Steve thought wildly. The Bucky on the video looked like nothing short of hell. He was on his knees in some sort of concrete cell, shaking from what looked like just the effort it took to stay upright. Someone had stripped his shirt off, so he knelt there with his chest on full display, letting Steve see the astonishing quantity of welts and lacerations along his stomach and ribcage in close to perfect detail. It was difficult to get a look at Bucky’s arms, as his hands were pulled behind him, seemingly cuffed to each other behind his back, but the puffy swelling and mottled skin at his left shoulder strongly suggested that the metal arm had only recently been attached. The area where skin met metal looked painfully inflamed even in the poor quality of the video, and Steve’s stomach clenched with both sympathy and anger looking at the brutal angle at which Bucky’s captors had tied his obviously injured arms. 

Steve wanted more than anything to turn off the video. He wanted to yank out the film, tear the projector to pieces, and burn the whole base to the ground for good measure, but he found himself standing stock-still, paralyzed in the face of the scene unfolding before him.

A sudden crackle of sound tore Steve’s attention from the video, where he’d been mesmerized by the heart-wrenchingly familiar way Bucky’s overlong bangs were hanging over his downturned face. Steve leapt in surprise, reaching instinctively for his shield, before realizing that the sound was coming from a tiny speaker near the projector. A voice was speaking in rapid German, echoing around the little room as it seemingly began to narrate the video. Through the dread rising in his gut, Steve cast around for the remnants of German he’d picked up during the war. He caught onto a couple of familiar words -  _ experimental _ …  _ documentation _ …  _ procedure _ …  _ soldier _ . He couldn’t glean much else, but that was all he needed to know.

Three pairs of booted feet entered the frame, marching toward Bucky, who flinched, barely managing to stay upright as the motion threw him even further off-balance. Steve realized with a jolt that he could actually  _ hear  _ the footfalls of the approaching men as well as see them. The clip wasn’t just narrated after the fact, it seemed - it actually had sound. 

“Such a disappointment,” one of the men on screen said, nudging one of Bucky’s trembling knees with the toe of his boot. The sound was fuzzy and crackled with obvious age, but Steve could understand the broken English just fine. “You know that arm was a gift, yes? We did not have to help you when we found you, but we  _ chose _ to. And you repay us how?”

One of the men, indistinguishable from the others in his dark HYDRA uniform, reached down and grabbed Bucky by the hair, yanking his head up to face the camera. Steve took one look and felt something in his heart curl up and die. The face on the screen undoubtedly looked haunted and distant and beaten and hurt, but it wasn’t the empty shell of the Winter Soldier. Steve didn’t know what it was that convinced him, exactly, but he was now more sure than ever that the kneeling man in the video was Bucky Barnes through and through. 

“You repay us by using our gift against us,” the man holding Bucky’s hair spat, giving Bucky’s head a violent shake before releasing it to hang back over his shuddering chest. “What were you thinking, trying to escape, hm? Were you trying to defect? You must know that your American friends want nothing to do with you anymore. You must know that they never even looked for you.”

Steve squeezed his eyes shut, guilt hitting him like a punch to the gut. 

The words finally seemed to get a rise out of Bucky, too. Steve pried his eyes open and watched, hardly daring to breathe, as Bucky struggled to raise his head, hair falling away from his devastatingly familiar eyes as he moved. His hair was an awkward length, somewhere between the short regulation cut he’d worn while fighting with the Commandos and the nearly shoulder-length style characteristic of the Winter Soldier. The misshapen cut made him look even more dirty and disheveled than anyone in his situation already would have. It was just such an  _ indignity _ , Steve thought, hands clenching into fists as he watched Bucky struggle. Even though he knew more than he’d ever wanted to about the actual horrors that Bucky, the person he cared about most in the world, had been subjected to at the hands of HYDRA, something about the way they’d just  _ neglected  _ him, letting the hair he’d always taken so much care to style when he went out dancing in New York grow out into a greasy and overlong mess, made Steve’s heart ache with a pain he could hardly describe. It reminded him that that was  _ his  _ Bucky, scared and hurting and alone on the floor of that cell. 

“Nu- ugh,” Bucky grunted, the protestation coming out less than coherent. His head lolled forward a little before he managed to catch it, pulling his gaze back up in the vague direction of his captors. He looked  _ drugged _ , Steve was realizing, blank-eyed and slack-jawed with a thin line of drool trailing out the side of his open mouth. 

“We are not going to tolerate continued disobedience, soldier,” one of the men surrounding Bucky said, voice going low and lethal even through the decades-old recording. “One would think that you would have learned by now what happens when you are insubordinate. I suppose we will simply have to keep teaching you this lesson until you finally understand it.”

The man speaking reached toward something holstered on his belt as he spoke. He glanced briefly at the other two guards who stood flanking Bucky, both of whom offered subtle nods of approval. Smiling grimly, the first man whipped out some sort of weapon and lunged.

Steve flinched, expecting an impact as whatever weapon the man was carrying made contact with Bucky’s skin. Instead, there was a brief moment of sickening quiet as the man stayed his arm, hovering what looked like a baton half an inch from Bucky’s battered chest. Then, with a flick of the guard’s fingers, the scene devolved into chaos. 

The baton emitted an electric hum, and Steve could see sparks flicker to life along its surface. No sooner had the device turned on than the guard was pressing the electrified baton to Bucky’s chest, maintaining contact for several agonizing seconds. Bucky’s entire body tensed, his eyes going wide and panicked like he couldn’t quite comprehend what was happening to him. He bared his teeth in unrestrained agony, though if he made any noise it was drowned out by the buzz of the electric current as the guard’s baton burned into his flesh. 

By the time the guard broke contact between the baton and Bucky’s skin, Steve felt about as tense as Bucky had just looked. Bucky seemed to be feeling the opposite, his shoulders sagging limply in relief as he fought to catch his breath. A mark was already blooming on his chest where the electric current had burned him, and Steve’s stomach clenched as he realized that the discoloration closely matched several of the other injuries already dotted across Bucky’s torso. He felt sick.

The guard gave Bucky a long, expectant look, watching him blink dazedly as he tried to pull himself back together. “Well?” he said finally. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Bucky stayed quiet, looking at the guard with blank eyes, like he was too stunned, or maybe too drugged, to even string words together. The guard tutted in mock disappointment, nodding for one of his colleagues to step forward. Steve nearly put his fist through the wall when he saw the second guard also reach for his belt. 

“You must come to understand something,” the guard said, leering down at Bucky cowering beneath him. “You belong to HYDRA. HYDRA does not tolerate disobedience. And the longer it takes you to get this through your skull -” he prodded Bucky between the eyes with the end of his baton, “- the more  _ difficult _ things will be for you. Unfortunately, your antics today have left us no choice. Are you aware that your little escape attempt landed several good men in the hospital before one was finally able to sedate you? And some were very seriously injured, too. I only hope what is coming serves as a reminder that when you exhibit this behavior… there will be consequences.”

With this, he flicked his baton on, reaching down to brand it against Bucky’s exposed neck. The second guard joined in, making contact with the small of Bucky’s back. Bucky’s body jerked and writhed as the electricity running through him suddenly doubled, almost like he was trying to pull away from the onslaught, but there was nowhere for him to go. In the brief spaces between batons being pulled away and reapplied against Bucky’s skin, Steve could hear the noise he was making - a long, thin, drawn-out groan, like he was too incapacitated to even scream. It tore at Steve’s heart. 

Finally, the guards pulled back. Bucky was still shaking hard, tremors wracking his body as his chest shuddered and heaved. He listed forward, nearly falling on his face with his arms still wrenched behind his back before managing to correct his course sideways, going down hard on his swollen left shoulder. Even in that crumpled position, Steve could still see the lower half of his face, unobscured by the curtain of his grimy bangs. His lips were moving, Steve realized. He held his breath, trying to listen through the staticky audio. The guards also seemed interested, going still as they watched Bucky try to talk. 

For a moment, nothing. Then, “B-Barnes…” 

Steve felt a lump rising in his throat.

“Serge… 32… 5…” 

Bucky cut himself off by rolling facedown and vomiting onto the floor. 

The room was silent for a moment, save Bucky’s ragged breath. Then the guards erupted into laughter.

“Doesn’t even know where he is… soldier, you think this is an interrogation? You think we care what you have to say to us?” The first guard brought his baton down on Bucky’s back without bothering to activate it, letting the blunt thud it made linger in the air for a second. When Bucky barely twitched at the impact, the man nodded for the third guard to step forward. 

“No,” he said. “You have nothing of value to us. This is punishment, soldier. Do not forget that. And it is meant to hurt.”

Steve blinked and all three batons were activated, burning against Bucky’s skin as he finally let go and  _ screamed _ . Steve had to look away. He picked a dent on the bland plaster wall and stared at it without seeing it as the sounds of laughter and crackling electricity and desperate, animal howling washed over him in waves. It was a long time before it was over. 

As the din abated, Steve forced his attention back to the video even though he could hardly see it anymore - whether from blinding rage or tears, he wasn’t sure. Bucky had lived this. His Bucky, who loved dancing and took his coffee sweet and always climbed out on the fire escape to watch the sunset, who had never really wanted to fight in the first place but who’d followed Steve into battle time after time anyway, had lived through seventy years of this and the least Steve could do was  _ try  _ to understand. 

The men were still surrounding Bucky, standing over him in a menacing circle as he twitched and shook and maybe sobbed. His mouth was still moving, whispering out little half-formed words that even Steve’s enhanced hearing couldn’t discern. Apparently deeming the lack of communication unacceptable, one of the guards reached down lightning-fast and grabbed Bucky by the hair, lifting him up so that his limp knees just barely brushed the ground. 

“What was that?” the guard asked, tightening his fist in Bucky’s hair.

“I - guh - n-no…” 

The guard raised the baton still clenched in his other hand, letting it crackle to life. If Bucky hadn’t been crying before, he was now, his chest rising and falling in big, silent heaves as moisture glistened on his cheeks, tears dripping down to meet the stain of sick still smeared across his chin. 

“Speak up, soldier, I can’t hear you.”

Bucky’s wide, terrified eyes seemed to be having a hard time focusing, but he pulled himself together enough to look at the guard, imploring and desperate, as he choked out a single word. 

“P-please.”

The guard gave Bucky a long, withering look. Then, still holding him by the hair, he brought the baton down in one final swoop, letting it linger for a moment against one of Bucky’s collarbones. It was scarcely more than a second, but the choked, inhuman sound Bucky made when the weapon met his skin echoed through Steve’s head for a lot longer. It was still reverberating there when the guard shut off the baton and released his fist, letting Bucky fall limply back to the ground.

He stayed there, unmoving. Steve wasn’t sure he was even conscious anymore. Still, one of the guards leaned forward to speak to him, his lethal whisper barely more than a hiss on the dated recording. 

“Know that, if you attempt to use your strength against us again, next time we will not be so merciful as to stop.” 

The guard leaned down once more and spat at Bucky’s crumpled body before straightening up. Steve swallowed bile.

After waiting a long moment for a reaction they clearly weren’t going to get, the guards finally seemed to give up. With a nod from their apparent leader, they retreated, leaving Bucky curled up on his side on the floor. In their absence Steve could hear Bucky breathing, wheezing a little as his chest moved shallowly up and down, and for a moment it was like all the time and space between them had fallen away and Bucky was really right there in front of him, just waiting for Steve to pick him up and carry him home. The fleeting illusion was shattered when the narration started up again, replacing the audio feed from Bucky’s cell with some sort of closing remarks about the events that had just transpired. Steve didn’t care to even try translating the message. He just kept watching, imagining he could still hear Bucky’s soft breathing, comforting and heart-wrenching in equal measure.

“Hey.”

For once, the sound hadn’t come from the projector - it had originated in the current century, somewhere just outside Steve’s peripheral vision. Steve whipped around in surprise, instantly ready for a fight, only to be met with the image of Sam standing in the doorway with his arms crossed. Sam raised his eyebrows, and Steve slowly felt himself deflate. 

“How much did you…”

“Enough,” Sam said. “I saw enough. You know better than this, man. You were gone so long I thought something happened to you and I was gonna have to fight my way outta here alone. You can’t just go silent like that, not while we’re on a mission.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispered. He rubbed angrily at his eyes and was momentarily surprised to feel his fingers come away wet. He’d been so focused on the video that he’d completely lost touch with himself and his surroundings, to the point where he hadn’t even realized how hard he was crying. Sam was right - he knew better than this. Still, he had to explain. Had to make Sam understand, even though (or maybe because) he still couldn’t wrap his own mind around anything that had happened to Bucky since that ill-fated mission in 1945. 

“They hurt him so much, Sam,” Steve said, his voice sounding raw and hollow even to his own ears. “They hurt him and he couldn’t even understand it, didn’t even know what was - and all because he tried to - tried to fight back -”

“I know,” Sam interrupted gently. “It’s messed up.”

“I should’ve…”

“Hey.” Sam’s voice, suddenly stern, cut through Steve’s well-practiced mantra of guilt. “Don’t do that. It’s not fair to you, and it doesn’t do anything to help him.”

Because nothing Steve did could help Bucky anymore, and that was the problem. Steve’s shoulders bent forward under a sob that he couldn’t quite suppress in time. He tried to turn away, hating that Sam was seeing him like this, but he still felt completely exposed and utterly powerless to stop. 

“We’ll find him,” Sam said quietly, lingering in the doorway to give Steve space as his shoulders continued to shake. “We’ll find him.”

Steve took a deep breath and glanced back up at the image still flickering on the wall. It was frozen on a final frame of Bucky, curled up in a loose interpretation of a fetal position with his hair hanging down over his eyes. Were it not for the horrors Steve had just witnessed or the raw injuries standing out on the rest of Bucky’s broken body, Steve might have been able to imagine that he was just sleeping, curled up in his bedroll next to Steve’s during the war - or, even better, in their bed back home in New York. If it were up to Steve, if he could just want it badly enough to manifest it through sheer willpower, that’s where they both would be - curled up together in some far-off past New York, untouchable by the war or the world or any of the forces outside their control that had come between them over the years. As it was, all he could do was pull himself together, repeating his silent promise to Bucky, or maybe to himself, over and over in his head as he pushed on to the next base, the next lead. 

_ We’ll find him _ , he thought, clinging to the words like a prayer.  _ We’ll find him _ . 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr at [winteratdusk](https://winteratdusk.tumblr.com)!


End file.
